Kenneth Kendall: 1921-2006

Artist to the stars

When he immortalized the actor who lived fast and died young, his bust of James Dean became a Hollywood icon in its own right

November 05, 2006|By Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — Kenneth Kendall, a portrait painter and sculptor, met James Dean only once, when the young actor dropped by Mr. Kendall's studio in West Hollywood.

But that meeting in early 1955 would have a lasting effect on Mr. Kendall, who devoted the next half a century to preserving Dean's memory through oil paintings, sculptures and monuments.

Mr. Kendall, whose best-known work is the bronze bust of Dean at the Griffith Observatory, died of complications of diabetes Sept. 3 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said Bruce Lane, a longtime friend. He was 84.

Lane, the trustee for Mr. Kendall's estate, said he decided to make Mr. Kendall's death known publicly to coincide with the reopening of the Griffith Observatory after a nearly five-year restoration and expansion project.

The Dean bust is on a walkway on the western edge of the front lawn of the observatory, which was used in the 1955 film "Rebel Without a Cause."

Dean's visit to Mr. Kendall's studio in January 1955 was prompted by his desire to view a bust of actor Marlon Brando that Mr. Kendall recently had completed.

"I brought out a folio of my Brando stuff, all the magazines and stills from `The Wild One' and `Julius Caesar' that I used in sculpting Brando," Mr. Kendall recalled in a 1995 interview with Kip Brown, who is writing a book on Dean.

"At one point, he turned to me and asked, haltingly--he could hardly get it out--`Would you be interested in sculpting me?' This kind of took me by surprise. I must say, he didn't look like much when he came in. He needed a shave, his skin was chalky white, . . . he wore horn-rimmed glasses, ... [but] I was sufficiently flattered . . . so I told him yes."

Dean's filmmaking schedule prevented him from seeing Mr. Kendall again to talk about the sculpture.

And on Sept. 30, 1955--eight months after they met--Dean was killed when his silver Porsche 550 Spyder collided with another car on a California highway.

Spurred by Dean's death at age 24, Mr. Kendall began creating a bust of Dean using magazine photographs and a life mask loaned to him by Dean's father.

In 1958, a bronze of Mr. Kendall's bust of Dean was installed at Park Cemetery in Fairmount, Ind., where Dean is buried; the bust disappeared nine months later and was never seen again.

Thirty years later, another casting of Mr. Kendall's Dean bust was dedicated at the Griffith Observatory.

"Mozart may have written his own Requiem," Mr. Kendall said at the time, "but James Dean ordered his own monument."

Over the years, Mr. Kendall painted more than 100 oil canvases of Dean, many of which he had reproduced on postcards, which he frequently handed out to Dean fans.

Robert Mitchum, Mae West and Steve Reeves were among those who also sat for portraits with Mr. Kendall, who was largely self-taught as an artist.

He also was known for his encyclopedic knowledge of theater history, opera and 18th and 19th Century British portraiture.